


glass dust in the wound, but we still glitter like gold

by Ladyboo



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, established wincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 09:18:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19059715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladyboo/pseuds/Ladyboo
Summary: He just wanted them to be okay, but okay was...okay was hard these days.





	glass dust in the wound, but we still glitter like gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [authoressjean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/authoressjean/gifts), [5hiki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/5hiki/gifts).



> hiya darlings! This is actually beta'd, somebody pinch me!

He didn’t think there was going to be an  _ after _ , not now, not anymore. 

 

Not when his brother stared at him with those eyes, with that pain-furrowed brow and that fear-tight mouth. Happy ever afters were things that were earned, and he had done well to take away their chance of ever being anything more than wounded and bleeding when they touched. It would have been different had it not been by his own hands. Surely it wouldn’t have cut so deep had it not been his own words, his own voice. Winchester men were infamous for their spines of steel and the way their shoulders readily bore the suffering of the world, but it was different this time, it was something more.

 

They couldn’t survive on  _ what if  _ and  _ maybe _ and  _ almost _ , those sort of things didn’t feed their souls and keep them on their feet.

 

But somebody help him where God never had, Sam watched him with those glassy, empty eyes Dean barely even recognized, and he didn’t know where to even begin to turn for help. He had said once to Sam that he didn't have a brother, but from the quiet breathing and the slow blinking and the way Sam didn't even flinch, Dean had the horrifying feeling that it was _ him _ who didn't have a brother, not anymore. 

 

He wasn't even sure he had a Sam.

 

Under the too-pale of his thin skin and the unclenching of his jaw, there was something missing, something that had been slipping way for a while. Bruises that formed too easily, thumbprint purple under his eyes where he hadn’t slept enough, he’d been falling apart for a long time coming. Since Dean has stuffed that angel in him, since snarling at him with a gun in his hands in a motel room, since Sam tipped himself over into the pit for a world that didn’t deserve him, screamed up at a ceiling coated in flames as his apple pie attempt went up with it. Sam had been fading for a while, picking himself apart with the same kind of anxious energy Dean had once taught him to ignore and Dean hadn’t even noticed. 

 

He hadn’t tried to touch him since Purgatory, since Bobby, since Cas had exploded into too many sticky Leviathan pieces. Not even after everything Sam had done to try and cobble him back together, no Lucifer or Michael or the fleeting turned back of their mother had had him reaching out for his brother’s hand like he used to do. There was no shame found in the bone-deep breathing comfort that he got when they were palm to palm, but recently, Dean had unconsciously not let Sam lay his tainted hands on him, and that was-

 

Sam wasn't tainted, never had been, that had just been Michael talking. That had been the too-bright burn of an angel licking through him, but his hesitance went back further than that. Hell-scared and affection-shy, Sam had never been anything but perfect in a visceral, raw kind of way. Dean had been the broken one, chewed up and left stained with the scorch marks of the bridges he had burned,  _ he _ was the one tainted by-

 

By-

 

He hadn’t even  _ asked _ if Sam was okay, hadn’t even tried, not really, not like he’d meant it. 

He hadn’t asked and Sam had stopped talking, and Dean didn’t know what to do with the silence that he hadn’t noticed until he realized he recognized it as familiar. 

 

Sam had been quiet like this for so long that Dean didn’t remember what he sounded like when he laughed, just a time scratched record stuck on a line like it couldn’t move on, and he didn’t know how to fix it.

 

He didn’t know how to fix them, and there would be no cavalry coming to help him this time. 

 

He had always known Sam to be infinitely strong, shoulders burdened with an Atlas-heavy weight he never shrugged. That strength had sapped from his skin, though. Now Sam had just blinked at him with those empty, tired eyes and that set mouth and walked away. 

 

He’d turned his back and left Dean in the library on quiet feet; his brother had become nothing more than a ghost while Dean hadn’t been looking.

 

Dean’s hands were loose at his sides, words deadening on his lips, as everything was going a little sideways. His whole world felt a little off kilter from something he’d done wrong a long, long time ago. And he should have moved, should have followed him, said something,  _ anything _ , as he watched his brother disappear, as he was left alone in a room that had never really felt like his. The library had always been Sam’s, filled with his curling voice and his quiet sounds, but it was desolate now, cold.

 

“Sam?”

 

His voice was barely a croak from the emotion acid vice that had taken his throat. Sam had walked away like Dean had gotten good at, the kid had always learned best by example. The echo of Sam’s footsteps faded quickly; his little brother was gone quickly, and Dean swallowed. It used to be that Sam never left him like that, responded when he said his name, leaned into him when Dean tried to touch him. He used to reach out with those familiar hands and touch Dean, used to make it look easy, but he realized with a sharp pain to the chest that he hadn’t felt Sam’s hands in a long time, that he himself hadn’t reached out to gather his brother close. Hadn’t bundled him up against his chest in a fierce Armageddon hold since that vamp had torn his throat out and Dean had thought he’d lost him to the bleak, grey, other side with faces that were familiar but weren’t. 

 

Sam had left him like Dean had been doing for years. There was something cold in his chest, something wet in his ears. His heartbeat, a curdle of ice, a underwater sludge that felt a lot like the oil slick drowning that had been Michael. It tasted like the muted panic that he’d come to breathe with while the Archangel had been stomping around in his skin like a tailored suit. He wanted out, he wanted off this damn ride, but the library was quiet, empty without Cas or Jack, with Sam having slipped away. His skin itched. 

 

_ Alone _ wasn’t good anymore, he’d never much cared for his own company, but the Enochian hiss in his head got serpentine loud when there was nobody breathing next to him. Things were never enough without Sam near him, took the glitter-glaze of not enough oxygen and ached like only lonely ever did, but there could be no Sam when Dean had spent the last few years of their lives chasing his brother away at every turn. 

 

He inhaled a deep, shuddering breath. His palms were rough, and he scrubbed them across his face just for a bit of feeling—like he could chase the leftover glaze of grace away. But, Dean would never be able to claw deep enough, and he didn’t know why he tried anymore. His fingers climbed and scrubbed through his hair, bitten nails and bony hands trailing until he cupped the back of his skull, knuckles laced.

 

It was a bastardized mimicry of the way Sam used to touch him, used to comfort him when he couldn't catch his breath and while the ghost of their father’s disapproval clung to his shadow. It took a moment to hear his knees creaking as he shifted, to realize that he'd started rocking in place. Dean grunted, pushed himself into motion because he couldn't stand to stay still in a room with echoes that growled his name. His footsteps sounded quietly against the wooden floors—he'd wandered in barefoot from his room—and Dean hesitated in the hall.

 

This place was supposed to be home, little brother’s laughter and safety on their skin, but all he could remember was the fever pitch craze of the Mark burning him to the bone and the celestial strobe of Sam's eyes glowing in the dark. He could hear Kevin screaming, feel the weight of that hammer in his hand, he hadn’t done right by these walls or the memories that lived in them. He hadn’t done right by Sam and the people he had left behind.    
  


He hadn’t done right by  _ them _ .

 

He took in shuddering breaths as he leaned to the side, turned and followed where Sam had gone, down winding halls and a flight of stairs until he reached his brother’s room. He was supposed to be the hero here, used to call himself such. It seemed that had gotten to his head; he’d twisted his own insides all up into knots until his pitiful self-esteem actually believed he was worth something, worth everything, just because a boy with a sweet smile looked at him with the most beautiful eyes. But now he didn’t have that false courage, that hot air gusto that he’d pumped into himself like a spare tire, what was Dean supposed to do? He couldn’t save anybody, let alone himself.

 

Evidently, he stared at Sam’s door. It was shut to him like his brother had been recently, for the last few months, years. He took a shuddering breath, and felt it catch in his chest, falter and tangle there around the over-salted rot of his ribs. He’d never done well with his own problems. It made sense that even staring down the barrel of the run didn’t change things, his little brother had always been the quietest explosion until it was too late to contain him. 

 

Hellfire unhinged. Dean just wondered how far the blast zone spread. 

 

He twisted the knob and pulled open the door. Sam’s eyes were wide, bright like a honey dripped summer sky. Maybe Sam knew him too well. He’d always been perfect like that, too smart for his own good, with the knowing of a thousand lifetimes hidden in his laughter, but there was no laughter now. Just those eyes that blinked at him, shuttered and empty like they hadn’t been since Zachariah had driven a Heaven-shaped stake between them and this was a chasm of his own creation that he didn’t know how to cross. 

 

When had anxiety become so familiar?

 

When had this frozen, desperate drowning of a panic attack become his new normal?

 

He’d stood there too long. “Sam, I-”

 

He wasn’t going to get any help here, not with how his brother stared at him. Not with the way he watched him; a doorway between them and a barrier that could go back just as easily as Sam had moved it. Dean was a ship without a sail and he wasn’t sure where to go now, he didn’t know what to say and-

 

And Sam looked so  _ tired _ , so alone, and he’d done that. 

 

Dean had put that there. He hated that Sam looked at him like he used to look at their father. 

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

That seemed to be all it took; knowing that he’d put himself on a level where he had never wanted to be, he had given the only boy who had ever mattered reason to look at him like he was nothing more than a stranger. He couldn’t salt and burn out the problem when  _ he _ was the problem, but he could bleed himself dry for trying. 

 

Rough words, dry throat, and Sam just stared at him, let him start the process of field dressing his own bones.

 

“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me like I should have been and I’m sorry that I made so many horrible choices and put you in positions that could have gotten you killed. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you and I’m sorry that I didn’t love you enough-”

 

“Dean-”

 

“No, Sam, I haven’t and we both know it. I’ve been so wound up with trying to save the world that I didn’t bother realizing I don’t need to save a single Goddamn thing if I can’t even keep you happy. Instead I just broke you down and hurt you and-and tried to  _ kill _ you, fuck Sam, you should have just left m-”

 

_ “Dean.” _

 

It was a quiet hush, mourning and pleading and exasperated at its roots, little bits of the Sam he’d always known and parts of the Sam he hadn’t watched grow. It shut him up all the same, teeth clacking together and throat tight. His hands had balled into fists at some point during his ramblings and he must have sounded crazy. He felt it, out of his depth and out of his mind over a man who should have walked away from him a long time ago just to save himself. Sam had never been very good at that though, the whole self-preservation thing hadn’t ever managed to stick quite like it should have. Dean didn’t know what he expected. 

 

His little brother watched him, though, heavy brow and a heavy sigh on his shoulders. His feet were bare, delicate ankles and pale toes visible, such a simple thing that made him seem so damn soft. Dean had forgotten how frail he was, how frail  _ they _ were. 

 

“I’m tired.”

 

_ Oh. _

 

Dismissal had always hurt—shown in half-felt pats on the shoulder and a turned back from a father who hadn’t been there enough—but he’d rarely felt it from Sam. He deserved that, though, he’d earned that, and Dean swallowed at the sour trickle in the back of his throat, at the burning wet in the back of his eyes. He’d done that and that was fine, he could live with tha-

 

Sam’s fingers were cold, the tips always were, like his body had grown too tall too quick and the important things like proper circulation just couldn’t keep up. It’d always been like that and it hadn’t changed, cool fingers as he caught Dean’s hand in his. He laced their fingers together in a perfect fit like it was the only thing he’d ever needed and Dean didn’t care if that was all he got, because Sam had  _ touched _ him. Gentle, patient, like Dean was some kind of scared animal that needed that, like he  _ deserved _ that, a careful tug to pull him close. 

 

Everyone always left, the abandonment issues in his hands numerous enough to fill the Mariana Trench, but Sam had never gone anywhere, not really. He had never left him behind for all that Dean couldn't follow, ever-watchful eyes and a steady hand if he'd just swallow his pride and take it, Sam had always kept pace for all that he'd fucked up. Sam had always loved him like they were enough, and he didn't know when he'd lost sight of that. 

 

He hadn’t kissed Sam in so long that he’d forgotten what the pressure of his mouth felt like, but that was fine, Sam remembered enough for the both of them. It was a chaste thing, a closed mouthed press that felt like coming home and he wanted to cry. Sam kissed him like breathing, Sam made his chest swell and his heart come alive where it had gone offline too many moons ago, and Dean couldn’t help the way he sighed. His shoulders lost some of the tension he’d gotten so accustomed to living with and Dean didn’t even fight it when Sam pulled away. 

 

When he tipped and pressed their foreheads together like Dean had done almost all their lives, bigger than him and holding onto Dean like Sam would never know anything else to do. Impossible eyes and a barely there smile, Sam was beautiful,  _ perfect _ , held onto him like he needed him.

 

“Let’s go to sleep.”

 

_ I still love you. _

 

_ We’ll be okay. _

 

_ I’m still here. _

 

“Okay, Sammy.”


End file.
